How balanced are AotP units to classic 'scape?

[GeneralRolando]

Originally Posted by capsocrates

I don't think auto-wound is the best counter to Planeswalkers. I think spreading the life points in your army across many figures and having many attacks is the best counter to Planeswalkers.

That could easily be said about heroscape as a whole. Maximizing figure count and # of attacks is always a winning strategy. The fact that these kinds of armies (and auto wound) are virtually the only thing that can compete with PWs is a problem.

[Tiranx]

Another great counter for Planewalker armies is using anything that targets squads. AotP relies on multi-life squads for protection. The Planeswalker is extremely strong, but without protection will fall really quickly.

Units like Braxas, Sudema, Grimnak, Mezzodemons, Zelrig, and the Red Wyrmlings are infinitely more valuable. The multi-life squads will still fall to having reduced dice and losing more than one life at a time makes those super squads feel a little more down-to-earth.

Overrunning Planeswalker armies with superior numbers works really well, but I think squad killing would be just as effective.

[Tornado]

Yes Braxas would be brutal to play against.

Are PWs Unique Heroes or something else?

[wriggz]

I didn't mention stingers, kow, or 4th since the argument centered around not using A level units. That said 10 squads of stingers would be terrifying.

I also think you either need to use order makers for the planed walker and their summons or don't use them for the heroscape army.

I think making the classic player use order makers would be unfair and gives advantage to the planeswalker.

[TREX]

@wriggz , with the order marker situation, I agree, it gives an unfair advantage to the planeswalker team. We included that scenario on our little card that I put together.

[Tiranx]

Originally Posted by TREX

@wriggz , with the order marker situation, I agree, it gives an unfair advantage to the planeswalker team. We included that scenario on our little card that I put together.

I just treat the planeswalker like Kato Katsuro. All order markers go on the planeswalker. then I can either use a squad or my planeswalker. If the Planeswalker dies, I lose my turns for the round and will have to place the order marker on the surviving squads from there on out.

I find it really hard to keep track of rounds if I don't use turn markers with AotP. In mixed games at least.

[dok]

Some thoughts:

• OM flexibility is nice, but it's not the deal-breaker. However, if you try to mix Planeswalkers and regular Heroscape units in the same army, then it hurts a lot to not be able to draw and play cards during a Heroscape unit's turn. (Obviously whether this is an issue will depend on how you decide to merge the rules. When we played on Saturday, we used OMs for everything, and you only got to take a typical AotP turn, including card draw, when you revealed the OM on the Planeswalker.)
  
  
• The Planeswalkers themselves, setting aside summoning and spells, are fairly well-balanced. If you just look at their statlines and abilities, and subtract 200 from their cost to discount for the spells, they are mostly reasonable. Would you pay 185 for Ob Nix with no spells? Eh, seems reasonable enough. Nissa seems pretty insane compared to Laglor for 20 more, but then, she doesn't get to boost the Krav. Sorin is probably the craziest (whirlwind attack and double strength life drain?) but the rest of them don't seem too bad.
  
  
• In Planeswalker vs. Planeswalker, blue rules. This is especially true if squads are involved. Misdirection is amazing, and the spell cancelling and the squad unsummoning are very powerful. It's less true if your opponent goes all-hero as that takes Unsummon and Call to Heel off the table.
  
  
• In mixed play, Red and White and black, with their healing and autowounding potential, become more potent. More on this later.
  
  
• The expensive squads are very good in mixed play, but don't appear broken. They are a lot tougher than typical squads of course, but I don't think any of them would get to A++ if they were just a straight Heroscape unit. They can be cut down to size, and none of the expensive squads can come back easily. I do think many of the more expensive unique squads are a bit underpriced, but this is more of a "the 100 pointers should mostly cost 120" as opposed to something really drastic.
  
  (My thought process, roughly: imagine an uncommon hero with the powers/stats of one of those squad figures, that bonded with Romans. Figure out a reasonable cost for that, then multiply by the squad size. This analysis probably tends to overprice slightly since the last squaddie left has poor activation efficiency, but planeswalker units have some advantages too. This doesn't work for the Rangers or Javileeners that have "once per turn for the whole squad" powers, but it works for most of the rest. In several cases I think the big squads are 5-10 points too cheap per figure, but it's not crazy. )
  
  
• The best two squads might be the two cheapest, since they come back without activations. They can be used as free meat shields and get tossed around with impunity. They are also the ones that care the least about getting autowounded or getting hit by nasty sorcery, because hey, they're cheap and they come back anyway.
  
  
• Planeswalker armies have an enormous advantage over Heroscape armies on most Heroscape maps, because Heroscape maps reward getting into position quickly, both with abundant height and with glyphs. Any Planeswalker army can advance and deploy more quickly than every Heroscape army, because the Planeswalker can just drop figures into position. This could actually be the single biggest issue with trying to mix the two games, truthfully.
  
  
• Compared to Heroscape, autowounds in AotP are DRASTICALLY undervalued, and this makes some stuff basically broken in mixed play. There's a number of examples of this.
  1. The Eldrazi Ruiner is the most obvious case. Autowounding all adjacent figures, for a very tough double-spaced figure that has Evasive 2, is FAR beyond anything in classic 'scape. It can't be tied down by squaddies and it can autowound high-value targets. If this was a regular Heroscape figure, it would have to cost... what, 250? More? And it's actually better than that in mixed play, because it can just get planted in the middle of a bunch of units instead of having to waste turns getting into position.
  2. Avacyn is similarly crazy, although it's not quite as bad. At least she can be killed more quickly, and she's only single-spaced. But she still gets to just fly onto a spot and drop autowounds. Hope you didn't play Deathwalkers...
  3. Chandra's burn power, as well as many other red spells (and a few black spells), allow for ridiculously cheap and unblockable autowounding. In a game on Saturday, I ran Nahiri up, teleported her into a crowd, and 3 spells later I had killed a previously unwounded Hydra, Zetacron, and a Protector of Ullar. Two wounds involved dice, but 5 of them were automatic, just from the cards in my hand. And this was not the best hand I could have had! It's really just insanely out of proportion with how quickly autowounds can be dealt in classic scape.
  
  
• Setting aside autowounds, a number of spells seem hilariously undervalued by Heroscape standards. I did a comical double-take when I first read Stoke the Flames. "Wait, for 15 points I become Taelord? Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat?" There's also stuff like Chaplain's blessing (heal your Hydra and give it +1 attack permanently!) for 20 points.
  
  
• I thought about all the above stuff and tried to metagame as best I could, but coming up with a countering classic army was hard. At 600 points, 13 figures, my best effort was Krug, Raelin, Krav, 7 black wyrmlings, and Rygarn. I think this had a fighting chance, since BWs can wound the planeswalker and Krug doesn't care about your damn autowounds, but still, it felt like a lot had to go right for it to win. (Atlaga was another option, but when you're staking your game on hitting a 16+ on a planeswalker, it feels like you've resigned yourself to the hail mary.)
  
  I think 10 squads of stingers probably beats just about anything planeswalker, but what does that prove?

So... yeah, my personal opinion is that, barring some more serious work, the two systems are not really balanced for play against each other. It can be done, of course, but you will have to power down your planeswalker armies and/or play designed AotP counter Heroscape armies for the games to be competitive when you cross one against the other.

[Tornado]

The cards and their points is a completely different meta.
There seems to be no reasoning for the point values.
I think it boils down to the card limit and less about the point limit.
Blue has 4 five point cards that are almost must haves which is nice because it allows you to get a few high point cards.
I enjoy deck building more than army building so far but of course there are simply fewer choices for figures.

Nice analysis.

[Nitemaredan]

I'm of the opinion that summoning is broken, especially when the games are mixed. We have played several games of Walker vs Scape, and by tweaking the summoning rules we have had consistently close matches(like, 1 life left on the lone survivor close). The current rules allow you to summon 2 cards at a time, 5 spaces away no restrictions. I lowered the range to 3 and decreed that only 2 FIGURES may be summoned. Additionally, I placed height restrictions on summoning based on Walker height. Chandra can summon 3 spaces away and maximum of 3 height above her, for example. Lastly, I limited spells per turn to 2(with dual casting a specific bypass), which greatly diminished, for lack of a better phrase, "dumb stuff".
That being said, we play purely for fun and an enjoyment of the characters, so my testing was NOT competitive. The only common squads I have multiples of are Blade gruts, arrow gruts, and romans, but I still only have x2 of those. So there was no testing with a bunch of 10th mass or knights of weston

[wriggz]

Between some of the evidence, Dok's excellent write up, and my own experience it looks like we are in a you can mix AotP and Classic Scape, but "It's not recommended" in the same way you can mix C3G figures in with classic, but it is not recommended (unlike C3V and SoV which are highly recommended).

Having almost fully painted my figures, I'm likely going to create some heroscape customs for personal use and maybe a set of cards specifically designed to be used with Classic scape (order markers, class and personality, maybe point tweaks, and all).

All said when finished I will likely only use AotP cards with other AotP cards and keep the two games separated.

[TREX]

Originally Posted by wriggz

Between some of the evidence, Dok's excellent write up, and my own experience it looks like we are in a you can mix AotP and Classic Scape, but "It's not recommended" in the same way you can mix C3G figures or HoSS figure in with classic, but it is not recommended (unlike C3V and SoV which are highly recommended).

Having almost fully painted my figures, I'm likely going to create some heroscape customs for personal use and maybe a set of cards specifically designed to be used with Classic scape (order markers, class and personality, maybe point tweaks, and all).

All said when finished I will likely only use AotP cards with other AotP cards and keep the two games separated.

I'm not sure why you couldn't mix HOSS figures in with classic scape, they are play tested with classic figures. Their point values are designed to be with classic scape. The only difference is that some figures have force user abilities in which case they are raised/lowered accordingly in point value. Being on the HOSS team, I highly recommend playing HOSS with regular Heroscape. They are not broken that way. On the original said statement that AOTP is not recommended, but can be played with Original scape, I agree.

[caps]

Originally Posted by wriggz

Between some of the evidence, Dok's excellent write up, and my own experience it looks like we are in a you can mix AotP and Classic Scape, but "It's not recommended" in the same way you can mix C3G figures or HoSS figure in with classic, but it is not recommended (unlike C3V and SoV which are highly recommended).

I'm not convinced yet, and even if I were I certainly don't want to give up.

I want to find a low-change way to integrate the two games.

Maybe it looks like just changing to formats that force the Planeswalkers to use less than 500 points. Maybe it's more significant changes like the ones Nitemaredan suggested. I'm thinking maybe if the AotP player starts with only 0 or 1 spell cards in hand before the first turn, that might go a long way.

--

I think it is important that we, as a community, try to figure this out. AotP is a way the Heroscape community (more specifically, the Heroscape community that gets together to play in large groups, like at tournaments) can grow. It is a big opportunity. I think it would be a mistake for us to turn down that opportunity because it involves a change to the metagame, or its too hard to figure out how to balance it, etc.

I think it would be huge if we can find a way that some person can discover AotP, share it with their kids, see an ad for a HS/AotP event at the gameshop (or on Meetup.com, or wherever) show up and play. It's a gateway into Heroscape, yes, but I think we should also find a way to welcome our AotP cousins into the fold even if they don't want to drop the $$$ to get some Heroscape pieces.